Oregon is aiming directly at the flashing circle on your chest, Bob Stoops is workin' on his night moves, and you can go to UConn to make computers fart.
Sittin'
Arkansas' gameplan against Texas Tech was the same as every other gameplan Bret Bielema has ever drawn up: run the dutch oven offense and dare you to breathe. The first move is controlling the clock by pulling the sheets over the opponent's head with the run game. The second move is letting loose with the horrible fumes of a fully weaponized digestive system of an offense, chewing up yardage and processing it through the seven stomachs of the run game.
The resulting heat and stench has killed better teams than Texas Tech, whose undersized defense could not get off the field against the mammoth Razorbacks offensive line, allowed 438 yards rushing, and let Arkansas go 8-for-12 on third down opportunities.
This is not saying that the Arkansas offense is bad or dumb. Far from it. We're saying that the run game is the worst and most effective possible way to force an opponent to smell the kielbasa-and-peppers sub you ate last night. I'm also saying that Bielema is the kind of dude who has totally done this to his roomates and brothers, likely with insane power.
It should also be stated that Texas Tech remains light-in-the-booty up front, so this was a bad matchup all along for the Red Raiders. Arkansas' true value won't be established until it begins working through its SEC West schedule. Still, watching a team find the hammer, swing said hammer, and then refuse to stop using that hammer until everything in front of it is reduced to shards? Great entertainment in the Hulk-ingest way possible, and deeply encouraging for Arkansas fans, who could probably hear Bielema holding Kliff Kingsbury's head under the sheets and muttering, "I ate at Chipotle last night. Sorry about that, handsome boy."
Khaki Campbell
A type of duck bred in England, one of the only places so bored it would decide to breed various types of waterfowl just for fun. The best part of its Wikipedia entry:
Despite popular misconceptions of skittish or flightly behavior Campbells are a very gentle, passive and friendly breed when raised by hand until maturity.
So tired of ducks refusing to commit emotionally to me, y'all.
Oregon might be the class of college football right now. The Ducks have a quality win over Michigan State that they achieved both after some on-field adversity and in spite of injury. The Ducks worked out well in their role as flat-track bully against the slow but valiant Wyoming Cowboys and South Dakota Coyotes, which is something you have to do, no matter how ugly it may look.
They also have a legitimate chance to roll through the Pac-12, where, like video game bosses, every team appears to have some kind of insanely obvious fault.
- UCLA: incapable of using its right hand (offense) and left hand (defense) at the same time and may have just had an arm fall off.
- Stanford: final boss who can't move more than six pixels in any direction too quickly, like the Blob in the old standup arcade "X-Men" game or possibly King Hippo from "Punch-Out."
- Colorado: "Super Mario"-era Bowser, in that he looks awesome and you can just run around him or jump over him without much trouble.
- Utah: any of the villains in the "Arkham Asylum" games, since no one's really taken them seriously since like 2009.
- Oregon State: that alien brain-heart thing from "Contra," with infinite ammo and no defense whatsoever.
- Arizona State: might have been a decent Goro, but lost that with a possible foot injury to QB Taylor Kelly this weekend.
- Washington State: that guy from "Fable 2" who talks a lot and then dies when you shoot him once.
- Arizona: Birdo. Just throwing an endless stream of crap at you and not even caring if he or she gets hit.
- Washington: Every "Call of Duty" villain ever. Just press A at the right and very obvious time to finish the fight, no matter how much damage you may have taken.
- USC: your tiny nephew in a Wii boxing matchup. Just punch a few times decisively and watch him flail to the ground. (Note: may not even have right part of controller in hand.)
- Cal: Clippy. You say Clippy doesn't really fight and isn't even a final boss? Have you watched Cal play football?
Yellllllaugh
The noise resulting from the combination of laughter and surprise, often erupting from the sudden introduction of something extremely funny into your environment.
Feel the passion. RT @LonelyTailgater: Check out the half-hearted, "I’m on the phone but let me still put my hand up" pic.twitter.com/Gf8qv6tI8a
— rebkah howard (@pink_funk) September 13, 2014Week 3 had next to nothing of theoretical value in terms of absolute football. It also had an Army punter looking like he'd just decked a Stanford player, Vanderbilt struggling with UMass, FIU temporarily dominating Pitt, whatever caper this was in the West Virginia-Maryland game, the complete rockbottoming of the Iowa football program under Kirk Ferentz, Kentucky's kicker booting a perfect knuckleball to tie Florida at home, Boston College outrushing USC by a total of 452 yards to 20, Georgia Tech almost losing to Georgia Southern and blowing a 25-point lead, Kent State's quarterback throwing this pass directly into the ground, and Kansas losing 41-3 to Duke in football. And that's all before we tell you about Texas giving UCLA the ball to start the first and second half after a botched coin toss.
This week was, if nothing else, hilarious for those who like a quality farce. (And we do.)
@mitch54@CorkGaines@daynperry omg pic.twitter.com/AiV4kkdtLK
— nick pants (@nick_pants) September 13, 2014Mt. Pleasant
The frigid habitat of the Central Michigan Chippewas, who fired up this week against Syracuse for an invigorating 40-3 home loss to the Orange. This entire event is odd, but totally in theme for a weekend when many college football programs made their scheduling decisions via weekend airfare specials.
For instance, Pittsburgh to Palm Beach was probably only $79 one-way, and that's how the Panthers ended up going to FIU, an FBS team with a two-game losing streak to FCS Bethune-Cookman. FIU still led for an embarrassing whole half of football before the Panthers pulled away.
Boise State got like $99 tickets, and wait, can we bring the kids and stay in Hartford ...
... and throw in concussions in a not-at-all-awkward juxtaposition with football? They brought the kids and made a weekend of it, walking away with a mostly unmemorable 38-21 victory over the Huskies. We say mostly unmemorable; there was a nice trick play, because Bryan Harsin understands all Boise games have to contain at least one, and that's why he's got the job.
Come to a UConn game, and make a computer fart.
Baylor went to Buffalo for some reason, and Bryce Petty played in a huge nasty blowout of the Bulls despite having two freshly broken bones in his back, because Bryce Petty is a warlord whose only food is the blood of the vanquished.
Mobile, Alabama must be a recruiting hotbed of unparalleled magnetism, since that is where Mississippi State traveled this weekend to play a game with South Alabama (now a real FBS team!).
Wake Forest went to Utah State and ended up with -25 rushing yards on the day in a game that saw Chuckie Keeton, one-time dark horse Heisman hopeful, go down with yet another freak injury. The other games were curiosities; this one sounds like total atrocity, but that's what happens when you let Wake Forest go loose into the world. They become that dude in "The Stand" who escaped the Army facility and let superflu out into the world, and that contagious football plague might be the only thing standing between Florida State and an easy slot in the Playoff. Wake Forest football: a pathogen with a purpose.
Illini
Maybe the most entertaining Twitter feed in college football belongs to Illinois, only because you have to imagine that someone, somewhere in a press box or in front of a television, has to tape their eyeballs open, strap themselves into a desk, and force themselves to compose the most optimistic tweets about Illini football possible.
For example:
2 points! UW snap on fourth down goes out the back of the endzone. It's 28-5 and #Illini will get the ball back.
— Illinois Football (@IlliniFootball) September 13, 2014"We got a fünfer workin'!" Despite attaining perfection, the Illini would continue to try to score, and did, and ruined everything.
The Big Ten went 3-6 this weekend in out-of-conference play. The victories came against Kent State, Miami (Ohio), and Fresno State, three of the worst teams in college football. The losses came to TCU, Bowling Green, Washington, West Virginia, Notre Dame, and Iowa State by a scoring margin of 209 to 136.
The Big Ten is deplorable. The previous comment is cut-and-pasted from every other week in college football for the past five years, minimum. (P.S. Gary Nova of Rutgers threw five interceptions and no touchdowns, and Rutgers still only lost to Penn State by three points.)
Lindsey Street
A major thoroughfare in Norman, Oklahoma. Bob Stoops drives down that road in ... what would it be? It's gotta be a Dodge Charger Hellcat SRT, and Bob frankly doesn't even know how much it cost. He just went and got it, man. He checks his hairline in the mirror, touching the fine hairs holding steady against the tide of age. It's like the Great Wall of China, man. Could see it from space. He fistpumped and bit his lower lip as he turned the radio up.
Bob Seger's voice filled his ears. Stoops let the hammer drop on that Hellcat at a light and let it roar for the nanosecond or two it took to get to the speed limit. HE WAS TOOO FAAARRR FROM HOOOOOME. Tennessee weekend. A weekend for beating that ass on an S-E-C team in his own house, no less. He sat up in his seat and sucked in his belly. Never in doubt and sexy: just like you, Bob.
They're gonna talk about how young they were. Sure. Talk about youth. That's an excuse. Everyone's got one. Oh, we're too young. Oh, we didn't have the right defensive backs in the game. Even Nick Saban had excuses. You know who didn't have excuses? That's right, the man peeling out in this American death machine who's seen every variation of offense, catastrophe, disaster, and football fuckery imaginable. Hurry-up, no-huddle offenses giving you trouble, Nick? Poor thing, it's not like Oklahoma's been tussling with them for 10 years now. Struggling in bowl games? No clue what you're dealing with there, Duchess. Losing key players and trying to find a starting quarterback? Ours from last year is now a tight end and we beat Alabama with a redshirt freshman. It's got to be so hard.
You wanna talk to Bob about excuses? That's cool. Bob's got an excuse for you right here and it's called "I'm too busy listening to "Live Bullet"and beating punks in lightweight Subarus off the line in drag races on Sunday to care." You need some advice? Catch Bob. He'll be tearing through these streets like he's 20 again and totally not thinking about the SEC at all. Nope. Not ONE bit.
[/Bob Stoops does donuts on MIke Slive's lawn]
Edmond
A small town north of Oklahoma City, which you might be able to see if you're an injured quarterback like J.W. Walsh of Oklahoma State, just watching the game from the roof of T. Boone Pickens Stadium with your hand down your pants.
Don't lie and say that doesn't look like an insanely chill way to watch a football game.
Springfield
So before we totally forget this: if you've never been to Eugene, Oregon before, you should not go there for a football game, or ever. It is most definitely not beautiful and does not have a stunning vista from the press box of a forested volcanic plain. The stadium is not beehive loud during Oregon games, and the fans are decidedly unfriendly and not pleasant in the least. There is not a delicious salmon sandwich sold on the first level of the stadium.
There also is not a stunning walk to the stadium through a forest preserve that crosses a babbling river. It definitely did not reduce two Michigan State fans I saw to just parking their asses on a bench, splitting a 12 pack of Bud Light, and wondering where, oh where in life they made mistakes that led them to not living there. You also don't exit that forest and immediately run face-first into the huge, glowing orb of the green block "O" for "Oregon," perched on the side of that stadium like the eye of interstellar Sauron looking for planets to menace.
Eugene does not have the real Jebediah Springfield statue on its campus, and it definitely does not merit a visit. Don't go there, and most definitely do not scout ways of trying to find a house in Oregon, because it might be the perfect place to live. Don't. I've heard it's horrible, and you definitely should not go there and find out for yourself. AVOID.*
* we are moving there as we speak and this is all spectacular lies
Bawl
Say it with us in your best theatrical Southern accent: just run the damn bawwwll, Bobo.
You can make the critique that Todd Gurley, the best running back in college football, should have gotten the ball with only 12 feet standing between Georgia and a go-ahead touchdown with 5:24 left in the game. The rebuttal to that is simple: when you've got Hutson Mason with the ball in his hands in just his fourth start, you don't just hand off to the best running back in college football who's averaging 6.6 yards per carry in the game. No, you get an intentional grounding call, put Georgia back 10 yards minus a down, then ultimately settle for a missed field goal.
This is not an argument and never was, and is just one more reason why South Carolina has won four out of the last five against Georgia. Spurrier doesn't stand in the way of stupid, easy money and calling a lot of the same plays over and over simply because they kept working. Mark Richt and the Georgia coaching staff are now down a game to start the race in the SEC East. (Again.)
Spurrier also went for it on fourth and one to finish off Georgia for good, which he did because deciding not to would be utter foolishness you should not even ask him about, mortal.
About-face
No really, Duke and Kansas lined up on the wrong sides of the field for a kickoff.
Bargaining
The stage of grieving that Georgia fans may be arriving at, just after eating popcorn out of a garbage can.
(HT: Gamecock Tripp)
Your week to come
Auburn goes to Kansas State in a battle of differently tempoed football agriculturalities. Iowa and Pittsburgh will drag football back to some stage of invertebrate development and leave the audience a mass of freshly devolved trilobites. Alabama adds another horrendous panel to the evidently still-incomplete Bosch tryptich that is Will Muschamp's rendition of Florida football. Oklahoma travels to Morgantown to confront the Evil Morgantown Mountain Fog. Miami and Nebraska play a football game, aka the Byzantine Empire versus the Mughal Empire, live in Lincoln! UCLA does not play a football game, but Jerry Neuheisel is free to videobomb as he likes.